Hi Everyone,

Rickey Bartlett here again, to anyone who takes the time to read this, I hope it helps and I truly appreciate your time.

This blog entry won’t be very long, but I just wanted to touch on some possibilities in the Southern Ontario housing market for 2024.  As most of you know, the last few years in real estate has seen a decline in listings and a decline in prices from the peak period in the early 2020’s.  This decline had many contributing factors, but the consensus driving factor was almost certainly the dramatic rise in interest rates.  In Canada, there’s many mortgage products, but the main three that I tend to see are fixed rate mortgages, variable rate mortgages and fixed payment variable rate mortgages.  With mortgage terms, we’re slowly seeing many Canadians get hit with very large mortgage payment increases upon term renewal….I won’t get too deep into this today, but reach-out to me if you want a better understanding of this, I can setup a call between you, a mortgage broker wizard I know, and myself (if you don’t know me very well, I enjoy talking…some would call it the gift of gab).

Okay, I started off talking about interest rates to help get us closer to the point of this blog.  Now lets talk about the strong news lately that is leading many Canadians to believe some rate cuts from the BoC might be coming this year (nobody knows how much, but possibly 1/4 to 50 basis points by mid-year), what do I think that means, I believe any rate cuts will lead to a hotter housing market as it enables more affordability for buyers at all ends of the buying market.

There’s lots of debate in the real estate world about pricing in many large markets still angling downward, even if rates get adjusted.  What’s my stance on this….to be perfectly honest, it’s conflicted!  I believe Canada still has a major issue with housing supply, and until the housing supply issue is rectified (this could take upwards of a decade), I can’t see major pricing declines in the large housing markets.  One of the things I’ve been keenly observing from many experts over the past few years, is the possible looming of a significant recession in Canada.  Given the large debt load of our country, and several other negative economic factors, there’s a strong possibility of a recession hitting Canadians…if this does happen, I believe that will have a big impact on housing prices, potentially resulting in significant price decline.  With that said, you can read articles from other experts that don’t believe based on their analysis that we’ll have an impactful recession.

Okay, this article started getting longer than I expected, and I could go much deeper, but I’ll end it with this last thought. If you’re in a situation within 2024 where you need to buy or sell, take the time to research market conditions and trends, and lean on your sphere of friends, family and subject matter experts to help guide you to a great outcome.  What will your sale or purchase price look like this year compared to the previous year, nobody truly knows, but hitting the market at the right time with a strong strategy backed by lots of analysis is almost always a winning combination.

Cheers Everyone,

PS>  This blog is just my high-level take, it’s not the view of any brokerage or real estate association that I’m affiliated with.

 

Links:

https://financialpost.com/news/canada-recession-worse-than-other-advanced-nations-economists

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/macklem-interest-rates-should-fall-some-time-in-2024-1.2013201

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/01/04/deloitte-canadian-economic-outlook/